Wednesday, April 29, 2009

On this day in history....

My sweet husband was born 26 years ago... and so to honor that occassion I decided to do something a little fun and fill this post with facts from this date in history.

On this date in:1289 - Qala'un, the Sultan of Egypt, captured Tripoli.

1429 Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English.

1636 - Composer Esaias Reusner was born.

1661 - The Chinese Ming dynasty occupied Taiwan.

1672 - King Louis XIV of France invaded the Netherlands.

1813 - Rubber was patented by J.F. Hummel.

1852 - The first edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus was published.

1856 - A peace treaty was signed between England and Russia.

1858 - Austrian troops invaded Piedmont.

1861 Maryland's House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.

1862 New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War.

1864 - Theta Xi was founded in Troy, New York.

1879 - In Cleveland, OH, electric arc lights were used for the first time.

1899 Jazz musician Duke Ellington was born in Washington D.C.

1913 - Gideon Sundback patented an all-purpose zipper.

1916 The Easter uprising in Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.

1918 - Germany's Western Front offensive ended in World War I.

1924 - An open revolt broke out in Santa Clara, Cuba.

1927 - Construction of the Spirit of St. Louis was completed for Lindbergh.

1941 - The Boston Bees agreed to change their name to the Braves.

1945 Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler married his longtime mistress Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker. The couple killed themselves the next day.

1945 American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

1946 Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders were indicted as war criminals.

1952 - IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Jr., informed his company's stockholders that IBM was building "the most advanced, most flexible high-speed computer in the world." The computer was unveiled April 7, 1953, as the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine.

1954 - Ernest Borgnine made his network television debut in "Night Visitor" on NBC-TV.

1960 - Dick Clark told the U.S. House of Representatives that he had never taken payola for the records he featured on his show "American Bandstand."

1961 - ABC’s "Wide World of Sports" premiered.

1967 - Aretha Franklin's "Respect" was released.

1968 - The musical "Hair" opened on Broadway.

1974 - Phil Donahue’s TV show, "Donahue" moved to Chicago, IL.

1974 President Richard Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of secretly made White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal.

1975 - The U.S. embassy in Vietnam was evacuated as North Vietnamese forces fought their way into Saigon.

1975 - The Bee Gees released the album "Main Course." The album featured "Jive Talkin'" and "Nights on Broadway."

1992 - Exxon executive Sidney Reso was kidnapped outside his Morris Township, NJ, home by Arthur Seale. Seale was a former Exxon security official. Reso died while in captivity.

1992 - Rioting began after a jury decision to acquit four Los Angeles policemen in the Rodney King beating trial. 54 people were killed in 3 days.

1992 - Paula Abdul and Emilio Estevez were married. They divorced two years later.

1993 - An animated Barry White was a guest on "The Simpsons."

1994 - Israel and the PLO signed an agreement in Paris which granted Palestinians broad authority to set taxes, control trade and regulate banks under self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1995 - Tupac Shakur married Keisha Morris inside the Clinton Correctional Facility. He was serving a 4 1/2 year jail term for sex abuse.

1996 - Phil Spector cancelled a recording project with Celine Dion due to a lack of a contract.

1996 Former CIA Director William Colby was missing and presumed drowned after an apparent boating accident in Maryland.

1996 The musical "Rent" opened on Broadway.

1997 A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons went into effect.

1997 Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.

1997 - Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and was dishonorably discharged.

1998 - Steven Tyler injured his knee at a concert in Anchorage, Alaska. 14 shows had to be cancelled.

1998 - The U.S., Canada and Mexico end tariffs on $1 billion in NAFTA trade.

1998 - Brazil announced a plan to protect a large area of Amazon forest. The area was about the size of Colorado.

1999 - Tommy Lee announced that he had quit Motley Crue to devote time to his new band, Methods of Mayhem, and his family.

2002 - Kelsey Grammer and his production company, Grammnet Inc., were ordered to pay more than $2 million in unpaid commissions to his former talent agency.

2003 - Mr. T (Laurence Tureaud) filed a lawsuit against Best Buy Co. Inc., that claimed the store did not have permission to use his likeness in a print ad.